I just picked up a copy of "The Healing Blade," which is, I kid you not, a card game about antibiotics, where different diseases and microbes are incarnated as creatures to fight and the antibiotics are warriors, with different strengths vs. different types of beast.

I have no idea if the game itself is any good, but man, the concept is AWESOME. Check out the art:

Munchkin would be suitable for a 15 y.o. boy, since I'm pretty sure it's my inner 15 y.o. who laughs at least half the time when I play the game.

Arkham Horror is another story though. It's a lot more involved and complex, plus if your son doesn't have familiarity with HP Lovecraft/the Cthulhu mythos, it might be boring for him. It's also an expensive game and has a ton of expansions. I'd say that to make Arkham Horror *really* fun, you have to be willing to roleplay your character quite a bit, otherwise you're just pushing cardboard chits around a board for upwards of 3 hours.

Arkham Horror.I got it for Christmas last year, and when I posted about it, I know I infected at least one other ppker!

Would mid-teen boys like it, do you think?

Totally. There's lots of tentacled monsters and weird rituals and symbols and loss of sanity, but it's all in your head (okay, with lots and lots of un-gory plastic-and-carton doodads on the board). You can choose your character from a lot of common archetypes (reporter, scientist, detective, etc). There's a lot of rules to read, but you can pick most of them up while playing (although it really helps if you've taken the time to read the manual once before starting).

ETA: gato might be right about the roleplaying bit. I'm such a geek that sometimes I kind of assume everyone has a RPG background. You can enjoy the game if you don't have any of the expansion sets, though.

I may have participated in more nerdy game nights than I would like to admit. Most popular among my group of friends is Power Grid. I mean, who doesn't like games about building power plants in Germany? Other favorites include BSG, Settlers of Cataan, and Thurm and Taxis. I will be scoping this threat for ideas for future game nights...

Arkham Horror.I got it for Christmas last year, and when I posted about it, I know I infected at least one other ppker!

Would mid-teen boys like it, do you think?

Totally. There's lots of tentacled monsters and weird rituals and symbols and loss of sanity, but it's all in your head (okay, with lots and lots of un-gory plastic-and-carton doodads on the board). You can choose your character from a lot of common archetypes (reporter, scientist, detective, etc). There's a lot of rules to read, but you can pick most of them up while playing (although it really helps if you've taken the time to read the manual once before starting).

ETA: gato might be right about the roleplaying bit. I'm such a geek that sometimes I kind of assume everyone has a RPG background. You can enjoy the game if you don't have any of the expansion sets, though.

it's good but it does take a looooong time to play- the first time we played through it it took an entire afternoon! We enjoyed it without any RPG element and without any expansion packs. my partner recently got into gaming and as his roomie I get to play too (I act like I really hate it but I actually love it, ssshhhh!). We have regular games nights with our friends. We are quite into Zooloretto at the moment and we also like Thebes.

I'd like to get him a game for Christmas, does anyone have any recommendation based on the games mentioned above?